Homily for Tuesday, 16 March 2021– Tuesday of the Fourth Week of Lent

Readings of the day: Ezekiel 47:1-9, 12; Psalm 46:2-3, 5-6, 8-9; John 5:1-16

Do our readings today not give us, as is common especially during these high points of the Church’s year like Lent, an almost overwhelming amount of detail?

I visited the Holy Land and Jerusalem in 2013 during our Basilian Peace and Justice Pilgrimage with my confrère [and then-coordinator of the Basilian Centre for Justice and Peace,] Fr. Bob Holmes. I think the reason Pope Paul VI referred to the Holy Land as “the fifth Gospel” (Pope Benedict XVI echoed Paul VI in this sentiment more recently) is apparent for people who have visited the Holy Land: I will cherish memories of seeing these holy sites forever, or at least until (perhaps) my next visit…

The scene John’s Gospel sets for us today is near the Sheep Gate, at a pool whose Hebrew name is “Beth-zatha” or Bethesda. John plants in our minds a vision of a rather sophisticated pool, one with “five porticoes,” but also in this scene, John says, there “lay many invalids,” including the man who had been laying there “for thirty-eight years” and whom Jesus asks, “Do you want to be made well”?

Since I enjoy finding out the meanings especially of names of people and places, I find it fascinating that “Beth-zatha” or Bethesda mean “house of mercy” or “house of grace.” This could be a touch of irony from John, since the Pool of Beth-zatha was known, as John points out, to be a gathering place for the sick, “blind, lame, and paralyzed.” Despite its sophisticated structure, and the fact it was a major water supply for Jerusalem in Jesus’ time, with multiple deep pools joined by a system of locks or dams, the presence of the sick made it a place of dis-grace to the more well-off people of Jerusalem of the time; it was the opposite of the “house of grace” that Beth-zatha’s name suggests.

But by his healing of the paralyzed man in today’s Gospel, Jesus turns the ironic dis-grace of this place, and that of the paralyzed man personally, into a moment and place of grace and mercy. This also brings me to a memory from my own ministry: When I lived in Rochester, I often said Mass at a homeless shelter called House of Mercy, in a hardscrabble part of the city. House of Mercy is still run by the indomitable Sr. Grace Miller, a Sister of Mercy. It is a present-day Beth-zatha, a House of Mercy and, well, a house of grace for more reasons than the name of its founder and director.

The Biblical Beth-zatha is also near the beginning of the Via Dolorosa in Jerusalem. Here, where Jesus healed the paralyzed man in today’s Gospel, he would begin his Way of the Cross. Again, a place of our dis-grace; our sin; our sickness would, starting from this place, be transformed—on a Sabbath, no less, as in today’s Gospel—into a place of grace, mercy, and salvation by our Lord.

Jesus, clearly, develops a reputation for transforming dis-grace; lack of mercy; sin; sickness; paralysis into grace, mercy, wellness, physical and spiritual movement and vigour. He does so for the paralyzed man in today’s Gospel and, soon thereafter, Jesus would do so for us, by giving his own life, beginning his Way of the Cross at the pool by the Sheep Gate called House of Mercy or House of Grace: Our Beth-zatha.

Homily for Sunday, 28 February 2021– Second Sunday in Lent, Year B

Readings of the day: Genesis 22:1-2, 9a, 10-13, 15-18; Psalm 116:10, 15, 16-17, 18-19; Romans 8:31b-34; Mark 9:2-10

This homily was given at St. Joseph's College, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB, Canada.

How many of us are giving up something or have ever given up something for Lent? Might this be a strange question to ask, especially in our present situation? After all, we are still in the midst of this COVID-19 pandemic that keeps us and many people from being able to worship in person and receive communion. We have given up a lot, and not only in terms of worship and the sacraments, over almost a year since the first COVID-19 restrictions and lockdowns began.

Yet, when we speak of giving up something, especially during Lent, do we not usually refer to giving up what may be comfortable or good for us, but that we do not really need? I, for one, have never been very good at giving something up for Lent. I usually try to think of a very small comfort to give up; even better if this is something I am able to give up beyond Lent. One year, when I was a novice, in the beginner stages of religious community life in preparation to take first vows, I decided to give up not coffee altogether—if I were to give up coffee altogether, I think I would be lethargic or miserable, or both, in the morning—but simply to give up the sizable amount of sugar I used to put into my morning coffee. That Easter Sunday, I put sugar in my coffee as I had until Lent that year, and it made my coffee far too sweet. I have never gone back to putting sugar in my coffee since then. Great, then, I thought, I would need to think of something else to give up for Lent after that!

Those of us who have given up something for Lent or are doing so this year: What kinds of things to we give up? Are they food and drink-related comforts: Junk food, alcoholic beverages, chocolate, or coffee (or simply the sugar in our coffee, maybe)…? Have any of us given up social media, like Facebook or Twitter, as I know some of my friends do during Lent? How about taking this time of Lent to master our habits: Quitting smoking, minding our language, and so on? How many of us have heard or seen Pope Francis’ list of things from which to fast and on which to feast during Lent? Pope Francis’ list is a few years old, and has been made into a convenient image on social media: Fast from or give up hurting words, anger, pessimism, worries, complaints, bitterness, selfishness, and grudges, says Pope Francis, so that we may “feast on” kind words, gratitude, patience, hope, trust in God, simplicity, prayer, compassion, and reconciliation. Finally, Pope Francis says, “Fast from words and be silent so we can listen.” Hmm… There’s another thing—wordiness—from which I know I could fast in order to listen and appreciate silence better!

Do we begin to understand, through all this, that there are many things we could fast from or give up during Lent? But what if we simply acknowledged that God is already way ahead of us in terms of giving something up? And the something, or better yet somebody, God has given up is not only a worldly comfort or something good that God did not really need. No, God gave up—for us!—his only Son so that we might have eternal life. God gave up, for us, something not only comforting yet unnecessary, but God gave up what is essential to himself. And this whole season of Lent focuses us toward our celebration of Holy Thursday, Good Friday, Holy Saturday, and Easter Sunday; our celebration in a few weeks from now of God having given up his only Son for our salvation.

God’s sacrifice of self for us; God’s having given up his Son so that we might have eternal life, which we celebrate not only through Holy Thursday, Good Friday, Holy Saturday, and Easter Sunday, but every time we assemble for Mass, is foretold in Jesus’ transfiguration. Mark, whose account of Jesus’ transfiguration we hear today, clearly connects this event to the passion, death, and resurrection of Jesus.

Is there not an almost overwhelming amount of detail in the Gospel accounts of Jesus’ transfiguration? There are many points on which we could focus in this transfiguration event: Jesus, for instance, does not take with him all his disciples or even the Twelve apostles, but only (presumably) his most trusted three apostles, Peter, James, and John, to witness the transfiguration. Moses and Elijah, usually interpreted as the presence of the Law and the prophets of Jewish tradition, speak with Jesus. We have what many Biblical scholars have commented as a full making known of the one God in three distinct persons of the Trinity: Jesus, present in human form, also the divine Son of God; the Father, especially represented by the voice from heaven, “This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him!”; and the Holy Spirit, most often connected with the cloud that overshadows the transfiguration scene.

We have Mark’s peculiar emphasis (more than Matthew or Luke, who also each feature an account of Jesus’ transfiguration) on Jesus’ order to Peter, James, and John, “to tell no one about what they had seen, until after the Son of Man had risen from the dead.” Mark, though, is pithier than the other Gospels about the fear Peter, James, and John felt during the transfiguration and Jesus’ foretelling of his own suffering, death, and resurrection. Yet all the accounts of Jesus’ transfiguration in our Biblical Gospels share the all-but-speechless Peter’s exclamation, “It is good for us to be here.” Peter then suggests, in all Gospel accounts of Jesus’ transfiguration, that they build three tents. This could be a hearkening back to the Ark of the Covenant tradition of the earliest tribes of Israel in the Old Testament. These ancient people of Israel were mobile, and carried the Ark of the Covenant, the tabernacle in which God was said to dwell among his people on earth, within a series of tents.

But allow me to suggest that the main focus of Mark’s Gospel especially, amid all Mark’s spectacular detail of the transfiguration, is on the passion, death, and resurrection of Jesus. When we think of the transfiguration, Mark wants us to connect with Jesus’ sacrifice, his willing giving up of self to death on a cross, so that we might have eternal life. Jesus, through Mark, wants us to contemplate prayerfully the events of his transfiguration in light of his resurrection from the dead. We have the gift of hindsight: Jesus’ resurrection from the dead is a completed past event. From Peter’s, James’, and John’s standpoint in time, Jesus’ resurrection was still yet to take place, so the apostles could do no better than to be (understandably) perplexed and afraid.

But even with our gift of hindsight, is not only the transfiguration but the passion, death, and resurrection of Jesus it foretells not so extraordinarily rare that, in a way, it should not only have struck fear in Peter, James, and John, but in us? The transfiguration points ahead to Jesus’ giving up of self on a cross for our salvation. There is only one other figure in the Bible (and the only one who is not God)—Abraham—who is willing to give up his only son, in this case Isaac, simply because God calls him to do so.

Like Mark’s Gospel account of Jesus transfiguration, Genesis’ account of Abraham’s near-sacrifice of Isaac is so detailed as to be troubling; as to raise more questions in us than it answers: Why would God test Abraham? Is God really that mean that he would play Abraham like that, expecting him to sacrifice Isaac only to stop him at the last moment? Here, although I think we are right to focus always on God in any Biblical event, I think Genesis invites us to focus on Abraham’s response to God; on his complete willingness to do as God asks of him, even to sacrifice his only, long-promised son, Isaac. Abraham’s willingness to give up his only son is presented as a prefiguring of God’s own complete willingness to give his only Son, Jesus Christ, up to death so that we might have eternal life.

What, then, do Abraham’s willingness to give up Isaac to death, and the transfiguration, which foretells God’s giving his Son Jesus up to death for our salvation, mean for us in terms of how we live here and now? For me, how well we answer this question for ourselves amounts to how we answer a few questions related to this first one: If we make some kind of Lenten sacrifice, say giving up something for Lent, does what we have given up make us more mindful of God’s sacrifice of his only Son for us on the cross; the only sacrifice capable of gaining us eternal life? Do our sacrifices make us more mindful of God always with and for us, as St. Paul asks today in his letter to the Romans: “If God is for us, who is against us”? Do we sacrifice willingly, as God does and has for us, and without boasting or appearing gloomy, or sacrificing something because we feel we have to do so? Does our sacrifice change us; transfigure us to be more like our selfless; self-sacrificing God? If we can answer “yes” to these questions, I think we are on the right track, this Lent and in our lives of faith overall.

Homily for Friday, 19 February 2021– Friday after Ash Wednesday

Readings of the day: Isaiah 58:1-9a; Psalm 51:3-4, 5-6ab, 18-19; Matthew 9:14-15

Memorial Mass for Barbara J. Schmidt

Here we are, as of this past Wednesday, Ash Wednesday, into the season of Lent, so is it not appropriate that we speak about the discipline of fasting? But what is fasting, why do we (or should we) fast, and what kind of fast does God, let alone the Church, ask of us?

Isaiah’s message is clear enough: The people of his time in Israel, who thought that all their religious rigour and discipline should be more than enough to please God, were mistaken. And, while by outward appearances they were fasting and practicing acts of humility and penance, inwardly they were carrying on the same old acts of sin and injustice that Isaiah denounces. What kind of fasting; what kind of penance or humbling of ourselves does God want of us?

God, through Isaiah, asks the people of Israel: “Is not this the fast that I choose: To loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke”? Here I think of our Lenten practice of giving something up for Lent, something not necessarily bad or sinful, but maybe something that we enjoy yet we do not really need. Giving something up for Lent is a good and noble practice; I certainly do not intend to criticize this. Yet I (mea culpa!) have never been very good at giving up something for Lent.

I do not wish to justify my difficulty with this Lenten discipline, a kind of “fasting” from something I do not really need. Still, though, does God want us to do something more than giving up something enjoyable but not really necessary for Lent? This tends to bring to my mind, instead of, or in addition to, giving something up for Lent, adding something to my usual spiritual routine, if you will. Is there somebody or a group of people we have recently encountered or become aware of who has a particular need? Have we become increasingly aware lately of a relationship that needs mending or maintaining in love, or a broader social problem that a little more prayer; a little more Christian care and charity; a little more perhaps going out of our way to encounter somebody disadvantaged or on society’s (or the Church’s) fringes in some way, could help?

My sisters and brothers, today we offer this Mass in memory, in prayer for the repose of the soul of, and in celebration of the life of my grandmother, Barbara Janice Schmidt. Today would have been her ninety-fifth birthday.

In many ways, Grandma’s lived example spoke to what God asks of his people through the prophet Isaiah: The number of charitable causes, in defense of human life and dignity truly from conception to natural death, especially of people in need or disadvantaged, which Grandma supported is astounding. She was, I have no doubt, much better than I am at fasting and penance as Lenten disciplines, but what marked her life were the acts of justice, charity, and humility she added on, often without other people knowing, and not only during Lent but all the time. Grandma was constantly seeking bonds of injustice and “thongs of the yoke” to undo, as God invites us to do through the likes of Isaiah.

It is, I think, quite easy to become fixated on outward appearances, especially during a time like Lent. This was the problem with “the disciples of John” in Matthew’s Gospel today. By appearances, they and the Pharisees were fasting; giving something up. But, Jesus reminds them (and us), they were missing the point: “The wedding guests cannot mourn as long as the bridegroom is with them, can they”?

As we celebrate, remember, and pray for our sister in Christ, Gramma, Mom, friend, Barbara Janice Schmidt, may we take something from her example. In this celebration, even (maybe especially) in the midst of Lent, the Bridegroom; the Christ, is among us and is in us, too. The death of God’s faithful, especially one as close to us as our Barbara, naturally causes us to mourn. But we are united in the Bridegroom, the Christ, with our Barbara by the bonds of Christian love; the bonds of having added something to make our world better. This is cause for joy. This is the reason we celebrate, we remember, and we pray here and now.

Homily for Tuesday, 16 February 2021– Ferial

Readings of the day: Genesis 6:5-8, 7:1-5, 10; Psalm 29:1a, 2, 3ac-4, 3b, 9c-10; Mark 8:14-21

How easy is it for us to become distracted by small external details, especially when hearing or reading Scripture, such that we have difficulty grasping “the heart of the matter,” so to speak, of a Biblical text? Or how good are we at resisting these kinds of distractions by external details?

I confess that I am vulnerable to distraction by external details (mea culpa!). Readings like those we hear today are a challenge to me, for this reason. I can empathize with Jesus’ disciples, whom Mark often presents as bumbling and distracted, including in the Gospel reading we hear today. Jesus rebukes his disciples harshly: “Are your hearts hardened… Do you not yet understand”? I admit that my first reaction to Jesus’ rebuke here in Mark’s Gospel is that I am not sure I would have understood Jesus’ point about “the yeast of the Pharisees and… of Herod,” and why he is so harsh with his disciples, simply from the scant context Mark gives us, any more than his disciples did. What did Jesus’ disciples do that was so wrong?

In the Book of Genesis, we again encounter a harsh God, who goes so far as to be “sorry that he made human beings on the earth.” All I can think when I hear that is, “Ouch! Would God ever be sorry that he made us”? But this, too, risks too much focus on surface details: Would God be “sorry” or regretful of his own actions, like creation? Would a loving God really ever will to destroy all living things on earth, no matter how wicked we had become? Would God ever change his mind, from seeing that his creation was “very good” to, in the space of ten generations from Adam to Noah, wanting to destroy it?

The flood narrative in Genesis, like Jesus’ irritable encounter with his disciples in Mark’s Gospel, invites us to reflect more deeply than on these surface details, however attractive or troubling they may be. In both Mark and Genesis, the hearts of God and of God’s people are not in the same place; God and the people, be they Jesus’ disciples or the people of Noah’s generation, with the exception of Noah and his household, clearly do not have the same will; the same priorities. Genesis describes “every inclination of” the hearts of the people as “evil.” Mark describes Jesus’ disciples’ hearts as “hardened.”

How exactly the people’s hearts are inclined toward evil or “hardened” is perhaps forever a mystery; a detail. But we know that it is still possible, in the midst of hearts that are “hardened” or inclined toward evil, to set our hearts to pleasing God; to doing the will of God. Noah did it, as Genesis says: He “found favour in the sight of the LORD.” And, if we read today’s Gospel in the context of all of Mark, we see that, no matter how bumbling and distracted Jesus’ disciples almost always seem to be in Mark, Jesus never gives up on them. In fact, he willingly gives himself up to death for them, and us.

I find this especially consoling, as an (often) distractible disciple of Jesus: That I, and we, know something of the deepest, most heartfelt and ultimate will of God. Our God wills from the heart to save us, and has sent his Son for this purpose. And, somehow, our task is only to discern and cooperate with this ultimate will for us from the heart of our God.

Homily for Sunday, 14 February 2021– Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year B

Readings of the day: Leviticus 13:1-2, 45-46; Psalm 32:1-2, 5, 11; 1 Corinthians 10:32-11:1; Mark 1:40-45

This homily was given at St. Joseph's College, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB, Canada.

Is the exchange between the “man with leprosy” and Jesus in Mark’s Gospel today not remarkable?

“If you choose, you can make me clean,” the man with leprosy pleads with Jesus. “I do choose. Be made clean,” Jesus says to the man.

Our reading today from the Book of Leviticus gives us the context in Jewish Law of the conversation between the man with leprosy and Jesus in today’s Gospel. The religious law about leprosy and all kinds of skin diseases is outlined in great detail in Leviticus. If anybody had a disease like leprosy, not only did they have to contend with the disfigurement brought on by these diseases and the lack of knowledge and effective treatments for them but, Leviticus says, they were to tear their clothes, “let the hair of their head be dishevelled… cover their upper lip and cry out, ‘Unclean, unclean.’” A person with one of these diseases was to isolate him or herself from other people and “live alone with their dwelling outside the camp.”

Now, before we judge the laws in Leviticus that required people with leprosy and similar skin diseases to isolate themselves from other people too harshly, might we place ourselves in the context of the people of Israel of the time? A disease like leprosy, especially when it was seen to be contagious, would have caused fear among the people. The spread of disease could be difficult to control, especially in a nomadic people like Leviticus describes. The most ancient people of Israel tended to live in tents in small groups or camps that moved often. More permanent settlements, as in cities or towns, tended to be small. And without effective medicines and doctors as we know them today, the religious elites—the priests—were the most educated people in these ancient societies. The people turned to them for the best advice not only on religious matters but for practical knowledge, too, like treating disease.

Still, can we not put ourselves in the place of a person in ancient Israel who was affected by one of these diseases, who had to isolate from society, even from loved ones, and “live alone… outside the camp”? For about a year now, we have been in the midst of this COVID-19 pandemic. Many people, maybe many of us, know somebody who has had to self-isolate, either because she or he was sick, or was in contact with somebody who was sick, or returned from international travel. Governments and media (rightly, I think) report the latest numbers of people infected with COVID, numbers of deaths, rates of transmission and positive tests, and so on. But do we find maybe that the mental health toll of this pandemic goes more unnoticed than the rates of physical illness? Even if this is necessary for disease control, people are isolated; restricted from seeing family and loved ones. Others suffer and die alone. Like no other disease in memory for most or all of us, COVID has caused widespread fear and anxiety. And we have the science and medical expertise and treatments that the people of ancient Israel did not.

With this in mind, let us return to the conversation between Jesus and the man with leprosy in today’s Gospel: “If you choose”… “I do choose. Be made clean.” When we hear Jesus’ healing of this man with leprosy, or other actions of Jesus that challenge rules or taboos, how many of us think that this is awfully bold of Jesus to do so? I think we are right to think this; Jesus is bold, in this and other instances, to challenge rules or taboos or, more precisely, to orient us toward the heart of any good law or social or moral practice, which is to uphold human dignity and a common good.

But may I say that the man with leprosy in today’s Gospel is just as bold in challenging the established rules or taboos as Jesus is in the encounter between them in today’s Gospel? This man is bold enough to kneel before Jesus and ask him, before Jesus says a word, “If you choose, you can make me clean.” Did this man know Jesus before this encounter, or did he know of Jesus’ reputation as a great preacher and healer? Was he simply desperate to be healed and reintegrated into the community? It is hard to say. Would the man not have known that, by approaching Jesus for healing, he himself was acting against the Jewish Law, the Law of Leviticus, which demanded he be isolated?

And the man with leprosy surely knew that Jesus owed him nothing; Jesus was as bound by the Law to keep distance from people with diseases like leprosy as the man with leprosy was. Yet the man asks Jesus, “If you choose, you can make me clean.” Would the man with leprosy have been just as surprised as anybody—as we may be to hear these words in our Gospel reading—to hear Jesus reply the way he did: “I do choose. Be made clean”?

The man’s bold but unassuming request of Jesus, “If you choose” can only be met by Jesus’ just-as-bold response, “I do choose. Be made clean.” Jesus does not pause and count the cost of his choice to heal the man with leprosy. In fact, Mark’s Gospel says, “Moved with pity, Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him.” My sisters and brothers, “moved with pity” is a rough translation of the Greek, which means something closer to (literally) “moved to his very depths.” The same Greek verb would be used to refer to the state of one’s gut when eating food that didn’t agree with us!

How many of us have heard of, or ever had, a “gut feeling,” as in, “I just knew in my gut that this was the right thing to do.” How often have we heard of people hailed as heroes for saving somebody’s life or acting in a situation dangerous to themselves, who say something like, “I was just trusting my gut. I’m no hero”?

By touching the man with leprosy, Jesus may have realized that he risked entering the same state of the man he touched to heal: He, too, could have been considered “unclean” and been shunned from the community. Yet what begins with Jesus’ “gut feeling” ends with a conscious choice: “I do choose. Be made clean.” Something in the letter of the Law is less important than this man’s health; this man’s dignity as a child of God; this man’s belonging to a social and faith community; this man’s wholeness.

But if we follow Jesus through our Gospels, this move from “gut feeling” to conscious choice for another’s good is a typical pattern of action for Jesus. His healing of the man with leprosy is only one instance of this greater pattern. Have we ever noticed, when we pray the Eucharistic Prayer we will pray in a few moments that, when we commemorate Jesus’ Passion, death, resurrection, and ascension into heaven, we remember what Jesus did to save us as a willing action of God: “Look, we pray, upon the oblation of your Church and, recognizing the sacrificial Victim by whose death you willed to reconcile us to yourself, grant that we, who are nourished by the Body and Blood of your Son and filled with his Holy Spirit, may become one body, one spirit in Christ.”

The former Master of the Dominican order, Fr. Timothy Radcliffe, in his book on the Mass called “Why Go to Church? The Drama of the Eucharist,” reflects on how Jesus willed to save us: Jesus “willed to reconcile us to” God by taking the place of the man with leprosy; taking our place; taking the place of everybody who has ever had to make their dwelling “outside the camp,” as Leviticus puts it. In fact, Jesus went so far, in his willingness to save us, that he would choose to die for us, says Fr. Radcliffe, “outside the camp”; outside the city walls of Jerusalem, on Golgotha, on a cross. And we remember this as the very reason for this Eucharistic celebration, every time we celebrate Mass.

Who, then, are the people to whom this willing act for our salvation by our Lord is calling to us to reach out? Who are the ostracized; the isolated; those “outside the camp”; the serious sinners; those outside the good graces of the Church, for whatever reason, in fact or because they simply feel unwelcome; the sick, physically but also mentally and spiritually, of our time and our experience? Have we ever had a “gut feeling”; been “moved with pity”? If this has been or will ever be our experience, to what extent have we or will we allow our “gut feeling” of what is right become bold action, putting ourselves at risk of being sent “outside the camp” ourselves? To what extent are we willing to echo those first words of Jesus to the man with leprosy: I do choose?

Homily for Sunday, 24 January 2021– Third Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year B

Readings of the day: Jonah 3:1-5, 10; Psalm 25:4-5, 6-7, 8-9; 1 Corinthians 7:29-31; Mark 1:14-20

This homily was given at St. Joseph's College, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB, Canada.

When was the first time God called us? If we have ever been aware of God calling us, when was this?

When we speak of somebody calling us, specifically God calling us, especially in this religious sense we may speak of such a calling as a vocation. This word is from the Latin verb vocare, which means “to call.”

Our readings today are all about call, or vocation, events. I imagine most if not all of us are familiar with the Old Testament story of Jonah. What does Jonah do when God calls him to go to the “exceedingly large city” of Nineveh to urge the people living there to repent “from their evil ways”? Well, Jonah flat-out refuses to go where God calls him. And, before the part of the Book of Jonah from which we hear today, Jonah is thrown overboard from the ship on which he is trying to flee God, and spends three days in the belly of a fish for his efforts!

We also hear a more obvious call or vocation event in Mark’s Gospel today: Jesus calls the fishermen “Simon and his brother Andrew” and then “James son of Zebedee and his brother John.” Both pairs of brother fishermen respond to Jesus’ call to be “fishers of people” in completely the opposite way to how Jonah had responded to God’s call for him to set the Ninevites right. Simon and Andrew, James and John “immediately” drop their nets; leave the lives and family they knew behind and radically choose to follow Jesus’ call.

And, even if our reading today from St. Paul’s first Letter to the Corinthians is less obviously about vocation events than today’s Gospel, it still centres on God’s call to us. St. Paul anticipates the imminent full realization of the reign of God on earth (as we should still anticipate today, since we do not know when this fulfillment of God’s reign will take place; we can only hope joyfully for it). St. Paul invites the Corinthians (and us) to examine and adjust our priorities; to live as if Jesus could return as he promised at a moment’s notice. God’s call or vocation through St. Paul to us is simply to be ready in joy for this event.

Yet how many of us think of a vocation as something related to the ordained priesthood or maybe joining a religious order of brothers, sisters, or nuns? How many of us have a broader understanding of vocation as any calling, specifically any calling from God? I invite us to think of vocation in this broader sense of any divine calling. This broader understanding of vocation, I think, will help us to answer the very first question I asked a few moments ago: When was the first time God called us? Whether or not most of us were aware of our first vocation—and I suspect most of us were unaware of when God first called us to anything, because probably most of us were infants at the time—we received our first vocation, in the religious sense of this term, at our baptism.

Right after the baptism itself, the pouring of water, we are anointed with a sweet-smelling oil called chrism. During the anointing with chrism at baptism, the priest or deacon prays over the newly-baptized: “God the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ has freed you from sin, given you new birth by water and the Holy Spirit, and welcomed you into his holy people. He now anoints you with the chrism of salvation. As Christ was anointed Priest, Prophet, and King, so may you live always as a member of his body, sharing everlasting life.”

This prayer speaks profoundly of our first Christian calling; our first Christian vocation. It is the same calling that Jesus Christ received from God the Father. The name “Christ” is not a surname, but means “anointed.” The Christ, Jesus who is anointed God’s own Son, receives a threefold vocation; a calling as “Priest, Prophet, and King.” We, in imitation of Jesus, the Christ, are called a priestly people, in a broader sense than the ordained priesthood, which is its own specific vocation. We are priestly from the moment of baptism in the sense that we are given a vocation “to glorify God by our lives”: To live holy lives, which involves worship of God and prayer, but certainly is not limited to worship (such as the Mass) and other forms of prayer. To be called priestly is to be called to orient everything we do and are toward God and toward our ultimate vocation, which is eternal life, never as disconnected individuals but always together, in and through Jesus Christ.

We, like Jesus, the Christ, are called a prophetic people. We are the voice of God on earth, not only by how we speak that attracts other people to God, but by how the way we live is coherent with the words we speak. Do we love one another, especially people we find difficult to love; disagreeable, in line with what we speak and hear from the Lord himself in our Scriptures: “Love one another as I have loved you.” No exceptions! To live up to our prophetic calling of our baptism is difficult but essential.

We, like Jesus, the Christ, are called a royal people. Our royal calling is not what many people may associate with royalty: Sitting on a throne, maybe distant from the people of a kingdom, with servants to wait on us. Or maybe, especially in Canada, where our official head of state is the Queen of England, we may associate with royalty what we see and hear of the British royal family or other world monarchies. But still this notion of royalty is distant from our everyday reality. Jesus and our Church mean precisely the opposite of this aloof sense of royalty when we speak of our royal calling.

To be called royal means for us to be called in some way to give ourselves in service to our sisters and brothers, somehow in memory of Jesus who gave his very life in service to us, for our salvation. Vatican II’s Lumen Gentium, whose focus is to answer the question, “What (or who) is the Church”?, beautifully defines Christ’s and our royal vocation as one by which we lead, again by the example of our lives—specifically acts of self-denial; self-restraint, even from what may in some ways be good, in favour of a greater good and in imitation of Christ—to the King who gave himself for us so that servants might be made kings like him. This is the heart of our royal calling, sisters and brothers in Christ: “To lead [one another] to that King for whom to serve is to reign,” as Lumen Gentium says; to give of oneself for the good and salvation of one another “is to reign.”

In all this, then, what does “vocation” mean, specifically to be called by God somewhere or to some activity in our lives? I think one problem (a good problem to have) is that “vocation” is such a broad term. We may define it along the lines of the priest, prophet, king motif, which connects nicely with baptism as our primary Christian vocation. We hear many professionals of all kinds speak, I think very rightly, of their professions not as jobs but as vocations. For me, as a priest of a religious order, it is easy to speak of having responded to a vocation, because our world, especially within the Church, is more likely to understand religious life and sacramental orders as vocations. But what about marriage, single life, the vocation to be a deacon, or lesser-known states in life like consecrated virginity, or liturgical service as lectors and acolytes (all of which are recognized with liturgical rites of our Church as true vocations)?

Do we understand how defining “vocation” can become very complicated, very quickly? And then how do we respond to a vocation if we discern that God is calling to us? Have we ever refused God’s call, as Jonah did, before he accepted to go to Nineveh? Were we immediately eager to accept God’s vocation to us, as Jesus’ first apostles seemed to be according to our Gospel? Or have we been somewhere in between refusal and immediate acceptance of God’s calling when we have discerned it? Was our response something like that of the Biblical Samuel, who wisely waited to be sure it was God and not his beloved priest Eli calling him? (We heard last week about God’s call to Samuel, and John’s Gospel version of Jesus’ call of his first apostles. Have we not been blessed with the richness of vocation events in our readings over these last few Sundays)? Maybe there is no “right way” to respond to a divine vocation, except, if I may say, to strive to orient our whole lives and conduct toward God, and toward eternal life in heaven, which is the ultimate vocation for each and every one of us.

Homily for Tuesday, 19 January 2021– Ferial

Readings of the day: Hebrews 6:10-20; Psalm 111:1-2, 4-5, 9, 10c; Mark 2:23-28

Tuesday of the 2nd week in Ordinary Time

One of the many points of wisdom that my novice master has handed on to me since my novitiate year was to ask myself what my most absolute convictions are, especially on more contentious issues, and on which issues or personal or faith convictions I would allow a bit (or a lot) more leeway. And when I determine what my most absolute convictions are, I still need to exercise due charity toward other people who may not share the same absolute convictions that I do, culpably or not: Be prepared to listen; to ask questions aimed at a better mutual understanding of truth and not questions “baited” with my own agenda, and so on.

Could we not say that, in the Church as in the secular world, all truths, teachings, or convictions are not created equal, so to speak? In the Church, the truths we hold to be the most directly divinely revealed, those more absolute truths and convictions, we call dogmas or definitive doctrines. Only a small proportion of our Church’s teachings and convictions belong to this category of what is essential for our faith.

So, in today’s Gospel, what did the Pharisees consider to be the essential tenets or convictions of their faith? On the surface, the heart of their complaint against Jesus and his disciples seems to be their breach of the Sabbath law. After all, Jesus’ final retort to the Pharisees today is that “the Sabbath was made for people, not people for the Sabbath.” But if the Sabbath law were at the heart of the controversy in today’s Gospel, then why were the Pharisees conveniently on scene to complain about Jesus’ disciples making a path “through the grain fields [and plucking] heads of grain”? By some interpretations of Jewish Law at the time, the Pharisees would have been doing work, therefore violating the Sabbath themselves, by having walked far enough from home to notice Jesus’ disciples making a path through the grain fields.

The Gospel passage we hear today is nestled within a series of similar controversy events in Mark involving Jesus or his disciples versus the Pharisees, so something a bit more complex and probably sinister is happening in today’s Gospel than the Pharisees simply complaining that Jesus’ disciples were violating the Sabbath.

Once again, Mark shows the Pharisees going out of their way to bait Jesus into excusing his or his disciples’ violations of Jewish Law that to them were an inexcusable breach of their essential convictions. Maybe we could say that they were an inexcusable breach if somebody other than the Pharisees were doing the breaching! Anyway, their essential convictions do not correspond with Jesus’ most essential conviction that meeting basic human need—feeding the hungry, for example—is more important than laws governing the Sabbath.

Here again, we have what Vatican II would call “a hierarchy of truths”: What are our most absolute, essential convictions? To which rules, religious or civil, are we willing to make exceptions, for ourselves or other people, and why? How willing are we to exercise charity toward people (even when they are in error and our truth is worth defending) who do not share our most absolute convictions? Maybe the Pharisees; maybe everybody could benefit from a figure like my novice master to invite us to keep these questions in mind.